From Around the Web: Understanding Bad Reviews to Improve Your Hotel’s ROI

No one likes getting bad news. Bad reviews can be challenging to read for even the most stoic of hotel professionals. But they can also be the key to learning how to improve your hotel and — perhaps more importantly — figuring out where to invest your capital for improvements.

Thankfully, TrustYou has done a little of the legwork for us. While their research doesn’t eliminate the need to read your own guest reviews, they have found some overall industry trends to keep in mind while reading them.

TrustYou analyzed more than 20 million reviews worldwide. Reviews were categorized by topics within the review (ie: service, room size, etc) and then compared these categories, the number of times they were mentioned, and the difference in scores between negative and positive reviews.

The study showed that the following are the most important features of the hotel/guest stay:

Actual location,

Service, and

Quality of the room

In particular, Service seemed to be a key factor for some negative reviews — and vital to be address so that potential negative experiences can be saved and converted into positive guest experiences.

In terms of negative reviews:

Issues about bathrooms, such as their cleanliness and size, were imperative and given that negative reviews were 2.24 times more likely than positive ones to include some form of bathroom comment, suggests that this is one factor that really needs to be looked at in hotels.

Hotel baths are most likely to show up in negative hotel online reviews. But they are preventable! Photo by tnooz.com

Were twice as likely to mention issues with beds.

This points to key areas where hotels can be proactive, reduce the likelihood of negative reviews and manage the overall guest experience more.

First, a focus on housekeeping: ensuring that bath areas are sparkling clean and linens are in good repair.

When they aren’t, timely replacement becomes important.

For example, scouring and scrubbing can only go so far in bath maintenance. Even with the most careful attention, baths, showers and fixtures will lose their luster with thousands of guests visiting your hotel each year. In this instance, a simple refinishing project may be all you need to restore the bath’s original shine.